The Time Machine

Illus. in black-and-white. When a turn-of-the-century scientist travels into the distant future in his time machine, he expects to find progress & superior people. But instead he discovers a world in decay. Reading level: 2.4.

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This is one of my favorite all time books. I got my first copy from a book fair at my elementary school when I was about nine but it was a little over my head at first. I think I finally was able to read the whole book at about the age of ten or eleven and I have read it several times since. Wells was very young when he wrote The Time Machine and it was published when he was 29. The writing is beautiful and translucent and the story telling is impeccable. My favorite part is when the Time Traveler goes 30 million of years into the future and witnesses the twilight of the Earth. The adventures that the Time Traveler experiences among the Eloi and Molochs are quite harrowing at times and the riddle of the Sphinx is equally perplexing. If you enjoy this book I highly recommend Wells' The War of the Worlds.

Written by Sci-Fi writer, H.G. Wells, more than 120 years ago - It's so easy to see how The Time Machine's wondrous story would have fascinated readers-of-the-fantastic back in the late-19th century.

I mean, even today Wells' story still continues to capture one's imagination as it meticulously describes The Time Traveller's adventure as he journeys into the year 802701 AD.

Yes. Indeed. The Time Machine is a timeless classic that makes it almost believable (through Wells' descriptive narrative) that travelling into the 4th dimension is actually a foreseeable possibility.

What initially prompted me to read The Time Machine was recently re-watching the 1960 film version of Wells' awesome story. Though this film's "moldie-oldie" visual effects were certainly not up to today's rigid standards - I still felt that the film's basic storyline remained quite faithful to Wells' novel.

Wells was an official PROPAGANDIST. He was a squat man with a squeaky voice, and the Gov. gave him a big house and several secretaries to dictate to. (Orwell too was a Gov. propagandist, but he soon made himself independent and wrote 1984 about the plans of the Future). This Wells book and the movie have a symbolic meaning - the guy who travels forward into and then back into the future carries science with him into the future to create a better world. This is the meaning. There is additional hidden meaning too; the eloi are in fact "elohim" or gods, the perfect humans of the future. The morlocks are the imperfect humans, who live "in the dark" (ignorance) and are afraid of light. So science will be used to create a world of light, a new Civilization. The planned future of mankind is called: "The Age Of Light." (There are symbolic meanings even in the "tricolor" of national flags, which contain white, blue and red - the combination of these is the "purple dawn" of mankind, the new Civilization to come.) In French Canadian Radio there is a scientific program titled: "Les Annees Lumiere" (The Years Of Light). Now, to show you there are hidden connections (never explained in school), the warship which gave the first shot at the Winter Palace to start Lenin's Communist Revolution (financed by the West) was called Aurora (Dawn) and it was not by chance. If you don't understand the connection, well, there is one. I grew up in E. Europe in Communism, and in primary school we wore red ties and were called "the red tie kids, trail blazers." And we sang a song: "Wake up, buddy, jump out of bed, the sky flowers with a PURPLE DAWN. Your eyes pop open, sleep flies away, our marching desire steps at the same beat (...like N. Korea today). The beehive awakens, the small bees buzz; they are hungry for sweet honey, they fly toward the flowers...." Do you notice the Purple Dawn and the Beehive? (Weishaupt called his group "The Bees' Order."). And in the early 1900s in England there was an elite group, called "The Red Tie League." Things are connected, just the crowd don't see it. The red 5-pointed star is a symbol of Communist Revolution - how come Virgin Radio and Heineken Beer have this for their symbol? Other symbols that are signals and convey secret meanings are the obelisks all over the developed world, and the crosses (blue or red) in the national flags.

Maybe it has something to do with the new technology, the Twitter thing and the ubiquity of communications and/or information, the drama that can be played out on your hand, or your hand-held device, the never-a-dull-moment-allowed culture — although I don't remember the book being boring — all I feel like saying is that it kind of knocked me out back in the day when I first read it, oh around about age 10, and I want to read it again now, 40 years later, and see if it's still that cool, but as far as searching for a plot goes, or getting technical about the science that existed when it was written, I'm not at all sure what the other commentators on-line here are yapping about. I have every reason to say this book is very daring, very exciting and well-worth any time and effort given to it. "Too many long words"? what the bloody hell does that mean?

bluedog21
Jan 25, 2015

how many pages does this book have

Gijytciytcty
Sep 21, 2014

hentai

red_bird_1018
Jul 01, 2013

I didn't really understand the plot of this book. I thought it went all over the place and it was very hard to understand for me.
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I'm going to read the book, but I saw the old movie a few years back. I really did like the movie. It captivated me so much with it's fantastic characters and strange concept. It was one of the reasons I got so into the sci-fi scene! I hope the book is half as good.

A group of men, including the narrator, is listening to the Time Traveller discuss his theory that time is the fourth dimension. The Time Traveller produces a miniature time machine and makes it disappear into thin air. The next week, the guests return, to find their host stumble in, looking disheveled and tired. They sit down after dinner, and the Time Traveller begins his story.